“I don't fear death because I don't fear anything I don't understand. When I start to think about it, I order a massage and it goes away.”~ Hedy Lamarr

Image courtesy of samuiblue at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I’m sitting in my darkened living room listening to soft classical music, icing my shoulder, and waiting for the pain to subside. I’ve just come from my weekly massage therapy session, and I feel like I have been wrung through the wringer. Literally. Prior to my recent car accident, I’d never been to a massage therapist. I’d never had a massage, therapeutic or otherwise. I assume there are different kinds of massage, because the work-over I receive each week bears no resemblance whatsoever to the calming, soothing ministrations you see people receiving on TV and in the movies (which is my only other frame of reference for massage practices). Sure there’s soothing music, low lighting, a heated table and warm sheets. Even essential oils (essential to what, I’m not sure). But that’s all a ploy to get you to succumb to the treatment. Kind of like when you go to the dentist and they have photos of sunny meadows and pretty flowers all over the walls. Who are they trying to fool? Like they think I’m not going to notice I’m seated in a dentist’s chair with a high-speed drill coming at my mouth?

Maybe it’s not quite the same. Massage therapists don’t use drills. But they use everything else: fingers, hands, forearms, elbows, meat tenderizers... okay, maybe not that last one. But it feels like it.

I have to admit I used to hear about people getting massage therapy and think how nice that must be. I didn’t have much sympathy for injuries that didn’t require stitches, casts or emergency surgeries.

I was in a prior car accident 25 years ago where I broke my collar bone and cracked several ribs. The emergency room people put my arm in a sling and told me to go see a doctor. When I went to the doctor the following day, he ripped the sling off and asked “What are you doing with that thing on?” No warm sheets, no lavender to sniff. I realize there’s not much you can do for cracked ribs, but he could have at least played some Enya tunes for me while he was maligning my sling. Given my current injuries, I have developed a new respect for massage therapists and for patients who undergo their treatments. Oh, it isn’t all bad. I kind of like parts of it, mostly the part where they tell me they are done and I can put my clothes back on.

My massage therapist today assured me there will be no bruising and that I will thank him tomorrow. I can hardly wait for tomorrow.

Some people really identify with their cars. An auto is not just a means for getting from point A to point B. It can be a statement, sometimes a status symbol.

Kermie II took one for the team.

Drive a hybrid? You obviously care about the environment. You probably hug trees in your spare time. Drive a Hummer? Maybe you want to appear macho. You probably crush beer cans on your forehead in your spare time (my personal bias is showing here; no actual offense is intended to any beer-can crushers, Hummer drivers, or otherwise macho individuals).

As for me, I drive a 2007 Ford Focus ZX3. I’m on my third ZX3. For those of you who don’t have a subscription to AutoTrader, the ZX3 isn’t as sporty as those catchy letters and numbers might imply. It’s a two-door hatchback. Edmunds.com tells us that this ’07 economy car is “several steps behind the class leaders” but its “fun-to-drive character could still make it an acceptable choice for budget-minded enthusiasts and commuters.”

Yawn! But that’s me, budget-minded. Not the status that I aspire to being labeled with. But to me, my car isn’t a status symbol. It’s a part of the family.

I got my first ZX3 in 2000 when they first came out. I thought it was one of the ugliest cars I’d seen, but my husband liked the 0% financing that Ford was offering, so we bought it with the understanding that I would only drive it while wearing a paper bag over my head.

My feelings about that changed rather suddenly one day when I dropped my daughter off at school and one of the junior high school boys asked – with obvious awe and admiration in his voice – “Wow! Is that your car?” Yep! You betcha. That’s my car. The paper sack came off, for good.

Since the car was green and was a little “puddle jumper” compared to other behemoths we’d been driving, we named it Kermie after Kermit the Frog of Muppet fame. Kermie served our family well, until one day my oldest daughter decided to take up cello playing. Alas, Kermie couldn’t hold me, two daughters, and a cello for the daily commute to and from school. With a tear in my eye, I traded Kermie in on an SUV, my status statement there being, “Hey, my daughter plays the cello. Take that and move over, all you piccolo piping pipsqueaks!”

The cello playing didn’t last long, and it was a happy day when I traded the gas-guzzling SUV in for my second ZX3, this one a red ’07. Kermie II couldn’t replace Kermie I, of course, but it landed a place in my heart nonetheless. I vowed that this would be the car I would drive forever, until the end of barbed wire and duct tape. Last May I proudly made my final payment on the car (thank you Ford for yet another 0% interest loan). Life was good.

Last Tuesday, I got T-boned in an intersection while driving Kermie II. Thankfully the driver of the other vehicle was uninjured, and my injuries will eventually clear up. That’s the important stuff. But sadly, poor Kermie II was a goner. It’s on its way to totaled-vehicle heaven.

While waiting for the final verdict on whether my car was going to be totaled (although it seemed obvious to me when the front of the car is facing north and the rear is heading northwest), I went scouring online to find a suitable replacement. And what should I find? A 2007 Ford Focus ZX3!

Kermie III is gray, automatic (unlike its predecessors), and - best of all – has side air bags, which have suddenly become an important selling point for me. And it already feels like part of the family.

As with Kermie II, I hope that Kermie III will be the car I grow old with. And if I take up cello, I will buy one with a retractable neck. Do they make those? They should. Otherwise, there’s really nothing wrong with the piccolo.

While many (probably over a hundred million) people tuned in to the Super Bowl game today, ate junky “party” food and drank copious amounts of their favorite canned/ bottled/ on tap beverage, I spent a rather quiet afternoon with my daughter. Instead of watching dancing cheerleaders on a plasma screen, we watched dancing flames in a fireplace. Instead of yelling at referees about miscalled fouls, we conversed amiably about all sorts of other things. And instead of eating buffalo wings and nachos…well, okay, we did eat nachos.

I’m not going to start bashing football, but I wonder if I really missed much. I mean, I already heard Beyoncé sing at the presidential inauguration (it was her voice, whether she lip-synched or not), so I could skip the halftime show. And I don’t watch enough television to be a connoisseur of finer commercial breaks, so the special advertisements would have been lost on me. And I didn’t watch any pre-bowl football this year at all, so I couldn’t even legitimately pick a team to root for.

I am intrigued, however, by what I found online about “Super Bowl Monday,” and the push to make the day following Super Bowl Sunday a national holiday. Apparently the premise is that many of the millions of Super Bowl celebrants will not feel up to going to work on Monday, so in honor of this nationwide hangover, we should all be able to take the day off. There is even a petition floating around to encourage the president to declare such a holiday. An article at Buford.patch.com states that as of today, there are about 13,000 signatures out of the 86,665 required to have the petition considered. I guess I wouldn’t mind having another paid (it would be paid, right?) holiday. I wonder what Hallmark would do for cards. Maybe you would open the card and out would pop a couple of Alka Seltzer tablets. You certainly wouldn’t want noisemakers or party poppers. It would have to be a rather subdued holiday, I would think.

In the event that the petition goes through, maybe I should prepare to cash in on this, come up with some Super Bowl carols to copyright. Let’s see… what rhymes with quarterback? Saddle pack, cul-de-sac, cataract, knick knack… this may take a while.

You’re not going to believe this… well, maybe you are. I didn’t at first, but now the notion is kind of growing on me. You see, I just found out that I’m from another planet. Maybe even another star system. It’s a little hard to wrap my mind around the idea, but it would sure explain a lot.I had a reading with a psychic yesterday, and among other (very accurate) things, she told me that I was an old soul (I’ve always felt that), and that I was a “star seed.” I’d never heard of a star seed. The psychic indicated that I had a lot of “homework” to do to get up to speed on all of this, so as soon as the reading was over, I ran right to my computer to research the whole matter.

The Sirius Temple of Ascension website tells us that “Star Seeds are beings that have experienced life elsewhere in the Universe on other planets and in non-physical dimensions other than on Earth,” although they may have had previous life times on earth as well.

Old soul star seeds are “Guardians of the earth” and have usually had “hundreds of life times on earth going back to the beginning of humanity” or even the beginning of earth. The life missions of old soul star seeds are “tied into the long term evolution of earth and humanity” and so they have incarnated on earth multiple times to fulfill relevant “projects.” Once the projects are completed, the old soul star seeds discontinue their cycles of lifetimes.

The psychic indicated that my purpose was related to healing. She mentioned Reiki (a form of hands on energy healing) and I told her that I was, indeed, a Reiki practitioner. The conversation somehow got sidetracked there when she said that my cats didn’t want me to give them Reiki because they were evolved beyond that and so they just roll their eyes when I try it on them.

I was so astounded at the idea of my cats rolling their eyes at me that I forgot to pursue the whole old soul star seed topic any further in our discussion. My subsequent research, however, turned up some tests that one can take to determine whether or not he or she is a star seed. My favorite is the Starseed Quiz. It consists of 100 questions and the nifty part about it is that the computer calculates your score at the end.

Some of the questions that intrigued me: “As a child, did you have an imaginary friend?” I had three. Didn’t everyone?

“When alone & indoors, have you ever worked or studied in the nude?” That would be a “no” for me. Eww!

“Do you have a blank space/or unusually high level of memory of your early childhood years?” My memory of my whole life is pretty blank, not just my childhood. Not sure what that might indicate.“Do you like tapioca?” Well, yeah! What's not to like?

“If offered a choice of meeting a celebrity or an alien ~ would you choose the alien?” I wasn’t convinced that this had to be an either/or question. I’d personally like to meet a celebrity alien.

The results of my test indicated that it definitely could maybe be a possibility that I am indeed a star seed. So what am I going to do with this newfound information? Well, my cats can forget sitting on my lap for Reiki any time soon, that's for sure. But I may need to do some further investigating into the rest of it. Even though I am poking fun at it, who am I to say what is and isn’t within the realm of Universal possibility?

After a twelve year struggle with Alzheimer’s disease, my father passed away last month. He was 90 years old.In my mind, Dad had already left us years ago, and what remained with us was just a body stuck on this earthly plane, while I hoped his spirit was free elsewhere. In recent years, when people would ask how my dad was doing, they would often ask, “Does he even know who you are?” The answer was no, he did not. But that was okay, really. The truly sad thing was that he didn’t even know who he was.

Before he was moved to a nursing facility, Dad lived for forty-five years in a home he had built for his family, the house where I grew up. One day he was with my sister standing in his living room and he told her, “You know, I built a house just like this one.” It was difficult to realize that the man who had poured heart and soul into creating this beautiful home could not now even recognize his own handiwork. I grieved his loss over the years of his illness, and somehow had the notion that his passing would just be a formality. But with his death, there have been some shifts for me. Good ones. I now have the comfort of knowing that he truly is free. The Alzheimer’s disease no longer has any hold on any part of him. And I also now have had the opportunity to honor his life. At a memorial service this past weekend, friends and family gathered together to say goodbye to a man they remembered as honest, caring, generous, and full of enjoyment for life.

When the opportunity came for sharing stories about my dad, his younger brother (my uncle) recalled the driving lessons that Dad gave him when they were young. Dad advised my uncle to drive fast so that if there was ever an accident, he would be far away from it by the time it happened. My brother recalled how, as a young boy, he noticed that Dad always politely stood up whenever a woman entered the room. He asked Dad why he did that, and Dad told him that a man should always rise when women enter a room because he never knows when he will need to run.

After my dad’s death, I was describing him to a friend of mine. I told her that Dad had been the kindest, most patient man I had ever known. My friend commented that that was a beautiful legacy for him to have left behind, a daughter who felt that way about her dad. A few days after that, my own daughter was talking about my dad, her grandfather. She used my exact words: “He was the kindest, most patient man I have ever known.” It seems his legacy has already spanned multiple generations.

I trust that Dad is in a place now where he remembers who he is and recognizes all that he has given his family simply by his example of a good and loving individual. He not only crafted a beautiful house to live in, he also crafted a beautiful life. The gentle soul will long outlive the ravaging disease. Just ask his granddaughters.

Well, today was the end of the Mayan calendar, and if the doomsday predictions were correct, you wouldn’t be reading this. Those of you who put off buying holiday gifts in the event of the end of the world will now have to hustle a bit to catch up to those of us who were pretty much oblivious to the approaching doomsday. According to holidayinsights.com, the Mayan (Meso American) culture, which dates back about 6000 years, was the most highly advanced culture of its time in Central America. One of their areas of specialty was astronomy. The Mayans developed a calendar which began at 3114 BC and ended on December 21, 2012. Ancient Mayan stone tablets have been interpreted to predict the end of humanity as of the end of the calendar. Which of course was today.

Holiday Insights offers some of its own ancient stone tablet translations that might help explain the ending date on the calendar, including writings they interpreted as saying, “Can we stop now? I need an Espresso," and “We've gotta stop here. The Marlin are biting out in the Gulf of Mexico." Really, they had to stop somewhere, didn’t they? Even Hallmark calendars only extend so far.

December 21st was also noted to be National Look on the Bright Side Day. If the doomsday predictions had come true, just think how ironic that would be. Given that it is also the winter solstice in the Northern hemisphere, and thus the day with the shortest amount of daylight in the year, we could use a “bright” side day, for sure. Now, if the world had ceased to exist, I wouldn’t be poking fun at the predictions today. I wouldn’t be doing anything today, as a matter of fact. But here we are, so onward we go.

But wait! Stop the presses! I just looked up a Wikipedia article that says “the cataclysmic or transformative events” are believed to occur on the 21st or the 23rd of this month. Dang! Well, if the world ends Sunday, won’t I be embarrassed. Or not. Just to be safe, I’m holding off on purchasing my 2013 calendar. Let’s hope the doomsayers are wrong, if for no other reason than that December 24th is National Chocolate Day. Wouldn’t want to miss that! Maggie

In honor of 12/12/12, here are twelve quotes containing the word “twelve.” “Twelve highlanders and a bagpipe make a rebellion.” ~Scottish proverb

“A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.” ~ Robert Frost“Too many church services start at eleven sharp and end at twelve dull.” ~ Vance Havner“It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.” ~ Rod Sterling

“Americans cannot realize how many chances for mental improvement they lose by their inveterate habit of keeping six conversations when there are twelve in the room.” ~ Ernest Dimnet“We spend the first twelve months of our children’s lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up.” ~ Phyllis Diller

“The recommended daily requirement for hugs is: four per day for survival, eight per day for maintenance, and twelve per day for growth.” ~Virginia Satir

“When you sell a man a book you don’t sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue, you sell him a whole new life.” ~ C Morley

“I speak twelve languages. English is the bestest.” ~ Stefan Bergman“By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.” ~ Robert Frost

“Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.” ~ Ansel Adams

“I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind! The answer is twelve? I think I’m in the wrong building.” ~ Charles M Schultz

I’ve begun a project to clean my house. Neglect – partly due to my last bout of depression – has left the house in such a sorry state of dishevelment that I think even my cats are embarrassed to have company over. Well, Sebastian did bring that bird in the house this summer, but I managed to wrest it from his jaws and release it before it got a glimpse of the messy living room. That was a close call.

With the holidays upon us, I have been thinking about inviting a small group of friends and family over for a get together, and so I want to have the house in order for that. But more so, I want a clean environment for my own benefit. Being the homebody that I am, I end up spending a whole lot of time surrounded by whatever mess I allow to collect around me. After a while, it starts to drag me down emotionally.

When I let the housekeeping go, the mess builds up gradually, unnoticed by my undiscerning eye until it has reached a critical mass such that I can no longer ignore it. And by that time, remedying the situation is no longer a small task. I have to declare an all-out war on grime. Since I hate housekeeping, I have to resort to “tricks” to keep myself motivated and moving forward. Here are some of the things I’ve been told to try:

** Set a timer for 15 or 30 minutes (or whatever amount works for you), and work non-stop for that length of time, then take a break. By doing this, you have a set deadline. We can do most anything for 15 minutes, can’t we? Even if it is repugnant, we can see an end in sight. Then the trick is to actually commit to another 15 minutes, and then another, until the task is completed.

** Break down the job into specific, bite-sized tasks. Instead of thinking in terms of having to clean the whole kitchen, first just set a small, easily doable goal. Wash the pots and pans as a start. Or clear out the sink. Or take out the garbage. Whatever applies to your situation. Just break it down so it becomes less daunting.

** Compartmentalize your cleaning by working on one specific area at a time. If the entire living room is a mess, just pick one square foot of space to clean first, maybe an end table, for example, and progress one square foot at a time.

** Do the things that have the greatest impact first. If it would please you most to have a clean coffee table, then clear the table off, putting the stuff somewhere where you can sort it later. If you deal with one accumulated item at a time, it will take forever to see an impact. If you get it all out of sight at once, you have the immediate reward of a clean table. The trick here is to go back and sort the individual items at a later time, don’t just leave them stacked somewhere else. The “out of sight, out of mind” approach is not a good long-term cleaning tactic.

I also find it useful to “set the stage” for cleaning. I put on clothes that I’m not going to mind getting dirty or stained or spilling bleach on, I crank up the energizing tunes on my stereo (or Pandora; I wonder if they have a “cleaning” station to listen to), and I remind myself of how good it will feel to sit down in a tidy room once I am done. Okay, now that I’ve sat here and had my “break,” I’m off to tackle another piece of the challenge.

“Let us read and let us dance – two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.”

~ Voltaire

With the colder, wetter, darker days of autumn and winter, it seems like the perfect time to grab a good book, snuggle in with a warm beverage and a warm blanket, and lose oneself in new thoughts and adventures.

I received some great book ideas from my readers, and shared some of them in a post on Thanksgiving Day. This is a continuation of that list. As before, where I have no direct knowledge of the book or author, I am relying on descriptions given at amazon.com.The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins – Publishers Weekly describes the first book of the series as a “gripping story set in a post-apocalyptic world where a replacement for the United States demands a tribute from each of its territories: two children to be used as gladiators in a televised fight to the death.” Reader reviews repeatedly comment on how once you start, you can’t put the book down. One reviewer states that the books are “Brutal, but engaging!”

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee – the amazon.com review says, “Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus – three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman… a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.” The Poisonwood Bible or anything by Barbara Kingsolver – amazon.com states that “The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959… a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.” Other Kingsolver novels: The Bean Trees, Pigs in Heaven, Prodigal Summer, and The Lacuna.Anything by John Irving including A Prayer for Owen Meany, The World According to Garp, and The Cider House Rules.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett – this story takes place in South America, and begins at a lavish birthday party being held by the country’s vice president. Roxane Coss, an American opera diva, is on hand to perform for the gathering. It’s a beautiful evening until the guests are taken hostage by a group of terrorists. As one amazon.com reviewer comments, “I thought Bel Canto might evolve into an oppressive hostage story, but instead, it is an amazing study of human beings, their universality, and idealized love - certainly a beautiful song.”

Frank McCourt’s memoir trilogy: Angela’s Ashes, Teacher Man and ‘Tis. A compelling story of the author’s life journey, told with “eloquence, exuberance, and remarkable forgiveness.”Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes – amazon.com tells us that the book’s main character Don Quixote “has become so entranced reading tales of chivalry that he decides to turn knight errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, these exploits blossom in all sorts of wonderful ways.” One version, translated by John Ormsby, is available on Kindle for $0.99 here, but you get extra points if you read the book in Spanish. Anything by Tom Robbins including Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Jitterbug Perfume, Still Life with Woodpecker, and Skinny Legs and All.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak – per amazon.com, “Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist – books.” Reviewer Judy Rose at amazon.com warns us “… read it only if you don’t mind really sad things, you like sad things, or if you just want to read one of the greatest books of the millennium.”Half Broke Horses and The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls — While The Glass Castle is a heavier memoir of the author’s unconventional upbringing, Half Broke Horses is a bio of Walls’ grandmother Lily, slightly fictionalized and written in the first person. Publishers Weekly describes Lily as “a spirited heroine, fiercely outspoken against hypocrisy and prejudice, a rodeo rider and fearless breaker of horses, and a ruthless poker player.”Anything by Sue Grafton, particularly her Kinsey Milhone mysteries, beginning with A is for Alibi, and so far spanning throughV is for Vengeance.

So there you have it. Plenty of good reading to get you through the winter. Thanks to everyone who sent in suggestions. I appreciate your help.

MaggieP.S. -- Have more good reading ideas? Feel free to post them in the comments.

Welcome!

About me and this blog: Having suffered at the hands of my own negativity for far too long, I decided it was time to claim the positive energy that is available to each of us for our own benefit and for the benefit of others. Hence, I've begun the process of "lifting the weight" of depression from my soul and moving into a lighter, freer space. Please join me in finding a way to a more balanced, affirming life.